France: Preventive Healthcare - Policies

Infant mortality, deaths per 1,000 live births, 2021: 3.6
Maternal mortality rate, deaths per 100,000 live births, 2020: 7.9
Congestive heart failure hospital admission in adults, age-sex standardized rate per 100,000 population, 2019: 287
Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease hospital admissions in adults, age-sex standardized rate per 100,000 population, 2019: 159
Average number of in-person doctor consultations per person, 2021: 5.5

Source: OECD (2023), Health at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, doi.org/10.1787/7a7afb35-en.

Maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births), 2020: 8
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), 2022: 4
Neonatal mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), 2022: 3
New HIV infections (per 1,000 uninfected population), 2022: 0.09
Tuberculosis incidence (per 100,000 population), 2022: 7.2
Probability of dying between age 30 and exact age 70 from any of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, or chronic respiratory disease, 2019: 10.1%
Suicide mortality rate (per 100,000 population), 2021: 16.6
Age-standardized prevalence of hypertension among adults aged 30-79 years, 2019: 29.1%
Age-standardized prevalence of obesity among adults (18+ years), 2022: 9.7%

Source: World health statistics 2024: monitoring health for the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals: Statistical Annex. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. Last accessed June 3, 2024.

“Historically, France has lagged behind other western European countries in investing in health promotion and disease prevention. Around 33 % of all deaths in 2019 can be attributed to behavioural risk factors such as tobacco smoking, dietary risks, alcohol consumption and low physical activity. Air pollution in the form of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone exposure alone also have anon-negligible impact on the number of deaths each year (Figure 6).”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2023), France: Country Health Profile 2023, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

“Spending on prevention increased greatly during the pandemic and accounted for 5.5 % of all health expenditure in 2021. It fell in 2022, although it remained above the usual level of about 3 % before the pandemic (DREES, 2023a).”

“Since 2014, France has implemented national plans to reduce tobacco consumption, with the aim of deterring young people from smoking andhelping regular smokers to quit. These objectives were amplified through the 2018-22 National Plan Against Tobacco, which set an overarching goal of creating a “smoke-free generation” and a specific objective to reduce smoking rates to less than 5 % among people born since 2014 by 2032. France also implemented other policies, including bettercoverage of nicotine substitutes from 2018, several tax increases on tobacco, a public #MoisSansTabaccampaign and creation of an app to help smokers quit. The measures taken between 2016 and 2020, if maintained, are expected to save an estimated EUR 578 million per year between 2023 and 2050, with a return on investment of EUR 4 for each EUR 1 invested in these initial measures (OECD, 2023). From 2023, the price of tobacco products is pegged to inflation, and the price of a pack of cigarettes is expected to reach EUR 11 in January 2024. A forthcoming National Plan Against Tobacco is expected to prohibit the use of e-cigarettes in response to their growing popularity among young people.”

France: Preventive Healthcare - Lifestyle, nutrition, environment, screening, vaccination - National Policies - World Health Systems Facts

World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other OECD member nations.

Page last updated January 15, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.